Book excerpt: After sustaining debilitating injuries during the Second World War, Corporal Alvin Downey returned home where he suffered silently, plagued by his dark memories of being questioned about the orphan’s flight out of occupied France, tortured with a cattle prod by a Gestapo agent, and eventually transported to a concentration camp. Within a gripping true story of honor and nobility, Downey’s daughter, Maria, leads others back into a chaotic time in history when General Eisenhower ordered the evacuation of thousands of children running through the rubble of bombed cities in Italy, France, and Germany. The mission, called Operation Blackfoot, enabled thousands of orphaned children to escape to freedom in England and the United States where they were welcomed by generous hosts such as Christina Ricci and Carolina Herrera who both educated and placed these children in American families after the close of the war. Orphans of the Storm relays the story of the Western European evacuation of parentless children from the Second World War, as told through the eyes of an American corporal.